


a time for futures

by meritmut



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Mischief and Mistletoe 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:16:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy borrows a dress, Sif makes a decision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a time for futures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [truethingsproved](https://archiveofourown.org/users/truethingsproved/gifts).



> "That day, she was amazed to discover that when he was saying, ‘You're an idiot,’ what he meant was, ‘l love you’."
> 
> (I'm so sorry.)
> 
> A slight domestic AU in the making, with hints of schoolkids and parents-to-be. I was six hundred words in before I remembered the request was for an AU, not AC, so now Everyone's Human.

The Christmas gathering this year sees strangers invited to the big house on the Asgard estate. They had travelled from the city by train, with their weekend bags under their seats and a sense of anticipation building to see the fabled manor at last, but a sleek black car met them at the station and took them all the way to the front steps of the stately home. Through the silky gloaming of the gardens they drove, along an avenue lined with flaming torches that filled the night with their amber glow, and had the pair gaping from the car's windows as the lane opened out onto the crescent-shaped lawn of the house itself, the ash trees in the garden festooned with ropes of gold-and-silver lights and dripping Yuletide cheer.

The guests climb out beneath porch's glimmering dome, pausing to marvel at the variegated splendour of this little kingdom, and Heimdall’s smile is warm and a touch wistful as he gestures for them to precede him indoors. Wistful, because this is home for him and a sight seen every day, but there is one sight forever barred to him: that of the beautiful old place seen for the very first time through the parting woodland, framed by the fading light of the setting sun and those ancient ash trees.

There comes Erik, dressed to the nines in his best suit, and Darcy – slightly less finely-attired in jeans and a black jumper softened by wear and washing. When Thor and Fandral arrived to escort the two scientists up into the party, the former had raised an amused eyebrow at the informality of her dress, but Darcy reassured him that somewhere upstairs a gown befitting a goddess awaited her - promised by Thor’s dearest friend herself.

After all, she explained, she can hardly afford a glamorous outfit on her own barely-existent paycheck, so why not take up Sif’s offer of a gorgeous dress in which she might feel a little less out of place among a faintly intimidating clan of elegant aristocrats? As logic goes, it’s inarguable.

A beaming Jane meets them both in the atrium, flitting down the stairs in a spellbinding green gown. She’s been here for days now, the only one of the three to have set foot in the big house before. Years have passed since she first visited Asgard but still, Heimdall observes, she glows with delight and wonder all the same at the beauty of the place. Such is her nature, filled with awe and joy (mainly at the prospect of spending more time in a designated dark-sky area without having to seek permits, and having nothing but her own human frailties to hold her back from exploring the heavens to her heart's content), and such is Thor’s adoration for her as he waits by the stairs, grinning, for her to catch up while the others go on.

They’re almost at the top of the stairs when a door opens up ahead and a radiant-looking Sif emerges. She virtually smoulders in a gown the colour of lush heart’s blood, of claret and poinsettias caught at the most perfect moment of their blooming, flowing from her delicate shoulders and plunging to a deep gem-encrusted V at the back. The shade perfectly matches her lipstick – a point emphasised when she greets Darcy with a wide, affectionate smile, before turning to meet Erik with a nod of the head and a firm handshake.

She returns her tawny attentions to Darcy as the party moves towards the ballroom and the pair depart, Jane following, to fetch the promised dress from Sif’s room. They emerge ten minutes later with the younger woman newly clad in a black dress, silky in its elegant fall, and her hair artfully manipulated by Jane’s own hands to tumble in shining curls over one shoulder.

Jane can’t help but be impressed by her handiwork, since hairstyling is not something she’s ever turned her mind to in the past, but now they’re entering the ballroom and all other thoughts are driven from her mind at just how stunning her partner's home really is – from the most gilded and stylised of its manmade features to the cultivated wilderness of the park itself, unfurling in undulating hills and secret follies for acres all around.

She’s never been one for ostentation but perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to live here permanently...

Perhaps.

The ballroom, a soaring collision of Palladianism, golden flourishings and a glorious painted ceiling, is the crown jewel of Asgard and the pride of Thor’s mother – who holds court by the enormous fireplace on the western wall, which waits for the lighting of the Yule log. They keep old traditions here, from the great wassail cup to the twelve-day fire, and it seems to Jane that from the moment she crossed the threshold of the house and met Heimdall’s fierce dark eyes she had stepped into another world, one where her own life might struggle to weave itself into the grand old tapestry of Thor’s ancestral home.

_A thought for another time._

The dancers at the centre of the room form a kaleidoscopic whirl of colour and motion that sparkles in the light cast by gilt candelabra, light that shimmers and splinters into a jewel-like glow and fills the space with a dreamlike haze. Jane blinks, tightens her fingers in around Thor’s hand and feels his thumb run gently over her own, but the distant laughter of children doesn’t help the surrealism of the moment. The sound ripples like silver bells through the smoky suffusion of candlelight and harpsong as from nowhere race two spindly, long-haired youths, nimble as young hares and full of breathless laughter.

One of them, a slim young girl of no more than thirteen, casts a careless glance toward the newcomers and Darcy sees the unmistakable mark of Karnilla there blazing in her eyes and wild grin, before she turns away on the heels of her smaller sister. Erik watches them disappear into the twirling mêlée of dancers and shakes his head slightly.

“They’ve shot up inches since I last saw them. Nanna especially…they grow so fast.”

Jane smiles at that, but Sif crooks an eyebrow.

“They take after their father that way,” she says with ominous humour, watching the girls thoughtfully, “Viking genes. And now…if you’ll excuse me,” she turns toward the rest of the gathering and the direction Balder’s daughters have now vanished in, “I’ve a lost soul to drag back to the party.”

*

After searching most of the upper house she locates him in the library, with his nieces perched on either side of him as he reads aloud grisly tales from a book Balder would probably toss in the fire if he knew Loki was reading it to his daughters (and Loki probably chose with that thought in mind). Still, the sight of Nanna and Vára so engrossed in the stories brings a smile to her face – long ago she, Thor and Loki would no doubt have done the same, stolen into the stacks of the library at school restricted to the older students and curled up together to thrill at the horror stories and generally more interesting reading on those shelves.

They never did pay much attention to what was expected of them.

She crosses the room on silent feet until she stands only a few metres away from the oblivious trio. Whichever tale he reads them, Loki has their imaginations wrapped around his every word. Nothing new there, then.

*

"That wasn't scary," Thor declared as Loki closed the book in his lap. "Not even creepy."

The disgruntled Loki moved to slide the book back onto its shelf, but his brother grinned and elbowed him in the ribs. "Read another one."

Returning the smile the younger of the two boys flipped back to the contents page, scanning it for a story he thought the older might truly find frightening. As a child Thor had no appreciation for the more twisted psychological chillers that Loki favoured - not because he didn't understand their intricacies, but merely because he thought a good scary story should be full of _real_ scares; bumps in the night and hauntings and graveyards at dusk. He loved good old-fashioned ghost stories, something he shared with their mother - and with the girl who had known the brothers her entire life.

Still, Sif found that even when she and Loki had been bickering like rooks for days and hissing all manner of vicious things at one another, to the point that they were both given detention for it once when they were twelve, she could coil herself onto a beanbag beside him and happily hear anything his smooth voice read out for her. Sometimes she drifted off during those stolen hours, carried away to mythic worlds to bear witness to the kind adventures and wonders she could only dream of, and had to shake herself away from staring at Loki as he read, telling herself it was the natural inclination of a listener to the storyteller. (Even a storyteller whose foul mouth had gotten them both held back for two hours after school. He'd first read part of _The Lord of the Rings_ to her during that detention, and she's never forgotten it.)

It wasn't until years later she realised why - even when he drove her up the wall and had her kicking seven bells out of her practice bag in the gym and breaking her own record with the javelin out of frustration - she always had time for him, why his voice was one of the few things capable of soothing her.

It comes in handy for Loki, that talent, given he's the one that usually riles her up in the first place.

*

“This is hardly sociable of you,” she remarks lightly, causing all three to start and tiny Vára to leap to her feet as if being caught anywhere near the book might mean a scolding.

"On the contrary," Loki demurs, "I'm spending time with my family. A most sociable pursuit."

Smiling, Sif merely lowers herself to sit close by the three of them and holds out a hand to Karnilla’s youngest child. Vára, her mother in miniature with an untameable mass of curly hair and the deepest dimples Sif has ever seen, flops into her lap and pulls Sif’s arms around herself, turning big brown eyes on Loki to continue the story.

Loki smiles softly, lowering his sights to the page and beginning to read again, as Sif closes her eyes to better allow his mellifluous voice to sink over her.

_“It is easy to lose yourself in these woods…”_

*

Midnight finds them under the stars, having slipped from the house for a few fleeting moments in no other’s company but their own. The night is cold and cloudless, crystalline light spilling down from a moon so clear it seems crafted from ice, but the chill playing across her skin is the furthest thing in the world from Sif’s mind.

She had been alone for what felt like hours, thoughts running wild in her head until she thought she might just howl into the darkness for release, when soft fingers gently nudged the hand resting at her side and announced another’s presence to her: without a word, Loki had settled himself beside her.

Years ago they had kissed under a moon like this and sworn never to speak of it again. To sit together now on the same lawn beneath the same silent stars, and think of it, does nothing but remind them of all the days they might have had if they hadn’t been so afraid to claim them. Of all the Yules and all the winters Sif might have had herself a partner, someone with whom to share her innermost self; of all the mornings Loki might have felt the warmth of another at his side, and gone forth the braver for it.

Of how different things might have been, before they reached this point.

*

It was another winter when, at twenty years old and twenty-one respectively, Loki and Sif had had their worst fight to date.

On a stormy weekend in early February, when rain swept across the park in silver sheets and the whispers of trees shivering in their nakedness made it hard to sleep at night, the younger generation had returned to the Asgard estate for Frigg's fiftieth birthday. No one had intended for it, but it was far from the joyous celebration the family's matriarch had hoped for when she sent out her invitations a month prior.

Sif arrived on the doorstep a wound-tight knot of exhaustion and high spirits after taking her university rugby team to the championships that week, sweeping Frigg into a tight hug and grinning when Odin remarked that she looked the part of a conquering victor, but Loki had stepped off his train a taut ball of exam-fuelled stress and irritation that the party was occurring on the weekend his reading time was due to begin. He'd tried to stifle that annoyance for his mother's sake, wanting to give her the best birthday possible before he left for Edinburgh again, but something about seeing Sif - seeing her for the first time in nearly eight months, all long legs and firespit eyes, and the bizarre way she seemed to challenge him anew with every word she turned his way - had made it incredibly difficult to restrain his temper for any length of time.

Within hours of their arrival, as the family and friends sat together for dinner and Thor regaled them with stories of his past term, the two are at one another's throats. By the end of the meal Sif sits fuming into her plate at an insult she thinks she might never forgive and Loki is gone, having left the table with only a curt nod to his mother before striding out.

They don't so much as look at one another for two days and it's only after scolding words from Frigg, and what amounts to a kick up the backside from Thor, that Loki seeks Sif out on the steps of the Palladian temple on the far side of the grounds.

She doesn't look up for his approach, keeping her gaze fixed on the book in her lap.

Loki clears his throat cautiously.

“I..."

Something that might yet shape itself into an apology (something even his eloquence finds hard to master) stumbles on his pride and forms instead a stilted half-effort at remorse. Still, there's sincerity behind it, and Sif might be pretending not to listen but she hears it well enough for it to give her pause, make her stay sitting there on the steps of the ridiculous old building - the building that had been their clubhouse in years long past and carries the weight of fond memory with it.

She brings her knees up toward her chest and wraps her arms around them, another wall between the two of them.

"I've come to apologise."

"I don't think I believe it."

"I - what I mean to say is, you should. I mean it. I was wrong to say what I did, and I hope you know that. I would never want you to go-”

Sif's eyes roll skyward.

“Right." Finally, she levels a glare at him. "And I suppose this is where you tell me that you never meant those things you said? That you'll never say them again and - and, what, that you can't live without my self-righteous bullshit in your life? Jesus, Loki.” Her voice is cold and bitterly sarcastic but wobbles at the last, as she practically jumps to her feet and makes to storm away, straight into the torrential downpour.

Clambering up after her, Loki follows into the rain.

“Wrong on all counts.”

She twists back with a kind of impatient savagery on her features, waiting for him to continue while the rain makes slick rivers of her inky hair.

“Am I, now?”

She stares him down, seething at the maddening smirk that slowly creeps onto his face but there's nothing that she can do, not without resorting to violence (not that he'd put it past her). There's a fire rising to life in his ribcage and it was struck from the hard flints of her hazel eyes - eyes in which he can see the desire to wipe that grin from his face as her fingers curl to fists at her sides, until at last, he gives in.

“Mhm. One, I meant every word. You are infuriating, overbearing and downright sanctimonious at times." He takes an involuntary step back when her eyebrow crooks in disbelief; the tell-tale warning sign of her temper flaring up again. "And second, no doubt I'll carry on telling you that. Just like you'll probably point out everything that annoys you about me, which seems to be most things. Am I correct?"

"At this point in time, very much."

"And third...I can damn well be without your bullshit, and I think you know it. You're insufferable. Of course I could live without it.” Here he falters. "But I don't...I don't _want_ to. I don't want you to go anywhere...is that not enough?”

It's the boldest thing he's ever said to her, and boldness Sif can recognise and admire as something she loves and values in him for its rarity. The look on her face softens into a hesitant smile, awkward and almost _shy_ all of a sudden.

“It is.” She draws close, but while Loki meets her halfway to rest his forehead against hers Sif moves with more confidence than he and pulls him in, wrapping her slender arms around him. "What are you?" she mutters with mock despair.

"An idiot?" he whispers into her hair, tightening his hold on her slightly as a half-laugh bubbles up from nowhere. The words spill out like a rush of air, a breath, and fall away into the wind and rain until nothing remains but their echo in her ears, the penny-drop of more than they seem to say though he must've said them a hundred times before. Mainly directed at her, true, yet Loki realises that after all these years, after bickering and fighting and reconciling and doing it all over again for their entire lives, it might be the first time those words have carried that particular meaning.

_You're an idiot and I love you. Even when you snarl and shout and slam doors, when you look like you might be about to murder me. In truth...especially then._

“The world's biggest,” murmurs Sif into his shoulder. Loki grins into her hair, unaware that she can feel it, and that the same thought is occurring to her.

_Even when you’re cold, and bitter, and you fight me at every turn...even then._

*

As children they had been close, schoolfriends and the most dangerous lab partners to ever wreak chaos in chemistry. As teenagers their relationship had been tempestuous at best and as young adults fraught with the memory of all that had gone before. How they can have come so far, that this is the man she loves and she is the woman he cannot be without, amazes her still.

But where Loki might happily immerse himself in the thought of what might’ve been, what never can, Sif is not one to wallow, and soon banishes the space between them as she leans her head into the curve of his shoulder. His fingers close around hers, give a tight squeeze before relaxing, as if to say _I need no comfort, spare me your words._

His lips ghost over her forehead, gentle and mild, as if to say _I thank you for them anyway._

Thoughts sow themselves in her mind and reap words on the tip of her tongue, and all the while she thinks of the way he had behaved with his nieces in the library, of how he always behaves around them. Family is a rocky area with Loki but he has ever been a devoted uncle: even when Nanna and Vára were barely forming coherent sentences he would listen to them as if they spun tales to rival his own. The most outlandish babblings of theirs made perfect sense if you believed the sincerity with which Loki responded to them, and the result is two young girls in whom self-doubt very rarely rears its head. It helps, to be listened to, Sif thinks with a touch of sorrow, and reflects on all the instances where he never was.

Perhaps for that reason the same self-doubt is a constant enemy, the same monster they fight hand-in-hand even when he screams for her to leave him be, and if she weren't Sif then she might be sore tempted to.

There were times in his youth when she thought he would never regain enough of himself to share it with others, after certain revelations that sent him spiralling further into crisis - that he would never be what you'd call _father material._ His own father hardly is. And never in the world would she dream of starting a family with him.

But now...

“I suppose now is as good a time as any,” she murmurs after a long time, staring at the dark lawn before her. _It's Christmas. Christmas is a time for futures to be decided._ She doesn’t need to see Loki’s face to know the frown that passes across it at her words, but when he pulls away to look her in the eye there’s more fear than concern in his features.

Hesitantly, because some things will never change and Loki is one of them, he reaches out to rest a hand upon the crimson silks over her stomach. He gazes at her seriously, and Sif almost wishes she hadn’t said anything.

But then, the light of the stars dancing in their depths, the faintest smile returns to his green eyes.

“Then we'll tell them?”

**Author's Note:**

> More of a potential domestic AU than anything, given I started like five plot threads and didn't go anywhere with any of them.


End file.
